Feeding the microbes in your gut
The key role diet and nutrition play for a healthy gut
May 27, 2026
Deep in our large intestines live whole colonies of microbes that feed off the food “leftovers” that make it through our stomach and small intestines. These microbes —known as the gut microbiome — are increasingly understood to play an important role, not just in digestive health, but in our overall health. Unfortunately, when things go awry for the microbes, it can harm our health, contributing to digestive issues like ulcerative colitis and colon cancer and more systemic issues like cardiovascular or neurodegenerative disease. Using a One Health perspective, Levi Teigen, faculty member in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition, works with interdisciplinary teams to better understand the role of diet in supporting a healthy gut microbiome.
Teigen and his research team are focusing on developing gut microbiome-based precision nutrition strategies. The team is paving the way for a more personalized approach to microbiota-targeted diet therapies, one that considers not just the microbes themselves, but the environment they live in. This includes work to analyze individual food patterns and their impact on gut health.
“We want people to understand there is no single miracle food for gut health. Instead, behavioral patterns and daily food choices have critical influence on the gut microbiome,” said Teigen. The research team wants to move away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to nutrition.
As a faculty member of the Microbiota Therapeutics program, Teigen studies diet-microbiome interactions across clinical conditions including supportive nutritional plans to improve the outcomes of treatments like fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), which is when a patient receives a transplant of healthy gut microbes from a donor via colonoscopy, endoscopy, or oral capsules. He and his team highlight the importance of both the donor’s diet and the recipient's diet. For example, a fiber-rich diet may help sustain beneficial bacteria from a transplant, while certain dietary patterns could hinder the therapy’s effectiveness.
“The gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem; it’s not just about what microbes are being transferred, but also about how they interact and function,” Teigen explains. “What a person eats can influence, to some degree, the composition of their gut bacteria, but as the primary source of nutrient flow to the microbes the major effect of diet is on the metabolic activity, which is the primary way the gut microbiome — positively or negatively — impacts our health.”
Teigen recently moderated the Mini Medical School series “The Hidden World Within: The Gut Microbiome.” The series aimed to provide a basic understanding of digestive physiology and the gut microbiome, but most importantly highlight the immense potential to improve health that comes with a better understanding of gut health and the gut microbiome.
“We have barely begun to scratch the surface of the role of nutrition in managing gut health,” says Teigen. “The new understanding of the role that the gut microbiome and gut health play in overall health, and the central role diet plays in supporting it, underscores the importance of dietetics and clinical nutrition in management of digestive diseases and other microbiome-mediated conditions to improve patient outcomes and quality of life.”
